


Jaeger im Herzen

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect, Pacific Rim
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Shepard was left traumatised when his twin sister was killed in combat with the reapers crawling up from the breach. Will he be able to pilot the Normandy Two with Admiral Anderson's assistant, Kaidan Alenko at his side?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jaeger im Herzen

He’s freezing on the Wall when Anderson finds him. 

The first thing he knows in the morning, the last thing he knows at night, and every moment of the day in between that isn’t filled with the great hammering of the Wall’s construction is this: Jane is gone. His twin is gone and he felt her die.

The Shepard twins had the deepest, most solid neural handshake the PPD docs had ever seen. Under their command, the Normandy One had racked up more reaper kills than any other Mark 3 jaeger, until that day in the freezing waters off Alaska.

The reaper, code-named "Collector", had torn through Normandy’s conn pod after shredding her arm. Had torn Jane right from her harness and John had only stopped screaming because his vocal cords ruptured.

He didn’t remember how he’d piloted the massive jaeger alone, destroying the reaper and limping his metal body to the shoreline to collapse in the snowy sands.

He just knew that Jane was gone and there was a hole in his soul that wouldn’t heal.

~~

Anderson knows how to make a persuasive argument, he agrees. Even though the world has backed Cerberus’ Construction Wall Plan, he’d rather ride out the end of the world in a jaeger’s skin than wait to watch it fall around them.

They step off the chopper at the Shatterdome into the pouring rain and Shepard doesn’t see who’s offering him an umbrella until he hears the man’s softly rasping voice. “He’s not what I expected."

Shepard cocks his head, tries to smile. He can’t hear Jane screaming over the noise of the blades and the rain slapping against him. “Good or bad?"

The other man is so handsome, it makes shepard’s stomach do a half-twist. And his face burns a deep pink as he realises he’d spoken louder than he’d thought. “It’s just.. you know. Different." He stammers out and Shepard’s stomach twists again.

It’s been so long since he’d noticed anyone, at first John can’t tell the difference between food poisoning and butterflies in the stomach. As Anderson introduces him to his assistant, Kaidan Alenko, Shepard hopes to god it’s the latter.

~~

As they circle each other in the training area, staffs held lightly in their hands as they size each other up, Shepard finds the food poisoning/butterflies are gone. He sees how they’re already subtly mirroring eachother’s stances, how they ebb and flow with the flurry of blows as Anderson watches on with a scowl.

Alenko was shit at picking possible co-pilots for Shepard because he was the logical choice all along. He knows this as Kaidan pins him again and he wants him. Wants him in that harness with him more than he can say. It’s not Jane. It’s not his sister. No one will ever be her. But he knows they’ll match up. He knows it as well as he knows how Alenko will fall when he pins him instead.

And he can’t figure out why Anderson says no, until he finally says yes.

~~

They’re in the skin of the Normandy Two and they’re in Kaidan’s memories, Vancouver burning around him as the reapers tear through the city. He’s a terrified child caught in memory, tripped by the loop of Jane Shepard’s screams in John’s head.

Shepard knows that Kaidan’s taken control of the Normandy Two’s thanix cannon in his terror. And part of him tries to wrest that away from him as the rest gently talks to the frightened child, tells him none of this is real, none of this can hurt him.

But it’s not John Shepard who talks him down, as they watch a jaeger tear through the reaper. And suddenly, he understands why Anderson didn’t want Alenko behind the wheel of the Normandy Two.


End file.
